


Palimpsests

by Poetry



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drabble, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Palimpsests

**Author's Note:**

> palimpsest, _n_. Something bearing the traces of an earlier, erased form.

Jack doesn't know it, but sometimes Ianto tastes the tang of metal on his lips.

When he calls Ianto's name, it's in a London accent. In the dimness of Jack's tiny bedroom, his skin is dark and and his eyes darker. Then Ianto holds him close, feels his skin hot as a furnace in the night, and remembers: Jack keeps the steel on the inside.

Ianto doesn't know it, but sometimes Jack smells leather on his skin.

He takes Ianto's hand, and it's just a little too cool to the touch. A double pulse thrums beneath his wrist. When he murmurs an indistinct curse under his breath, it's in a language of a race long dead. Then Jack gazes into his blue eyes, and he's not sure whether they belong to a human, a Time Lord, or everyone he'll have ever loved and lost, in all the span of eons.


End file.
